In a painstaking process this alternate history storyline has been researched and is presented for your entertainment.
By using historical documents from the US Joint Chiefs of Staff we know exactly what the contingency plans were in the case of an expected Soviet attack in 1946.

Friday, December 9, 2011

He looked into the eyes of a killer. I guess the conviction of his beliefs gave him the courage. Courage that he never knew he possessed. Courage that may get him horribly tortured or murdered. If he had know just how utterly ruthless his inquisitor was he may have acted differently. But what did it matter whether a man killed one or millions. He was still a killer.

He had to focus and stop thinking about how short the man behind the desk was. He had to ignore the pocked marked skin and concentrate on what the crewel mouth behind the huge mustache was saying. What the actual words were and what the veiled threat behind them was. Because of how his mind worked it was hard for him to tell these things.

His mind was like a machine. Everything was orderly and logical. He was usually helpless when he had to deal with other human feelings. He was not a sociopath just not adept at picking up the physical clues that most people took for granted. The meanings of the change of tone or emphasis on certain words eluded him. He was lacking in interpersonal skills. Logically he realized this but it did him no good. He just didn’t have the capacity to adapt to most of the difficult situations that most of us cope with daily. The difference between a white lie and a real lie puzzled him.

Consequently he never lied.

The man across the table from him lived to lie. He ate lies. He breathed lies. To him it came as natural as blinking your eyes. He was a master at it. Sergo was helpless on many levels if the man with the mustache wanted to destroy him. He could tell Sergo a lie about a subject dear to his heart and psychologically ripe his ego apart in less than three sentences. He could mentally send him into the depths of hell and cause suicidal thoughts with ease. The man across the table has both killed and crushed the very soles of thousands of victims.

Yet with Sergo he didn't. He was never even tempted. From the first time they met he knew exactly how valuable this thing, that called himself a man, was. Imagine having a conversation with this human calculator, this idiot savant of logic, feeding into it all the pertinent information needed and absolutely counting on it to give you the most logical and unemotional solution to any problem. Give him the facts and the most logical solution would come out devoid of any politics or emotion. Yet he was able to factor in human feelings such as jealousy and fear in his calculations. So in essence he was much more valuable than what we now know as a computer.

Sergo was such a fiasco as a functioning human being that he posed no threat. He was the closest thing there is to a living breathing calculating machine that ever existed. The only thing that touched his soul was flight. The only thing he dreamed about or spent idle moment thinking about was birds and planes. That and puzzles.

He loved solving puzzles whether just in his mind or ones that involved any kind of logical system. He tended to reduce all problems he is given to solve into abstract terms and then worked them in his mind like someone playing chess. If this piece does that then this piece can counter here, action and reaction…if we did that, they do this. Yet he was able to factor in the human factor. There was just a enough humanity built in him to factor in the emotions a machine could never emulate.

This made him invaluable. That meant he will not meet the fate that befell so many. Sergo will die peacefully in bed.

Wednesday, December 7, 2011

It was a dark, moonless, night. The cold autumnal wind whips papers about General Sun's New 1st Army Headquarters, a shack in southeastern Manchuria, supporting their Manchu brothers repel another communist attack outside Shengyang. But there are other things to consider...

An old classmate from VMI made contact with him earlier in the month, renewing old acquiantences, but more importantly, trying to convince him of what he himself has been thinking for quite some time: deposing the paranoid and dangerous Generalissimo, that was burying the KMT and the Chinese people, with his insane obsession with the communists. General Sun Li-Jen was convinced that Chiang Kai-shek was wasting the very best of China, in a vain pursuit of glory and absolute power. Sun believed that China should belong to its people, not to any one man to do with as he sees fit.

Seeing Jim again made Sun yearn for a simpler time, when he had only to attend his studies and writing letters home to his wife, Xitao. But wasn't his path from the Virginia Military Institute until now leading him toward this moment? Wasn't that why he'd abandoned his studies in civil engineering, started in Tsing Hua University, then continued at Purdue University in the United States? To help China defeat it's enemies and be at peace?

Now, his old classmate is a member of the American CIA, the successor to the OSS, and he is a high-ranking general in the Kuomintang Army, leading the most successful unit in that Army. He has worked with the OSS before, with Detachment 101 and the Kachin Rangers, and knows them to be as good as their word. He also knows that this may be his only chance to save China from the godless communists and not have the European powers interfere. British units are leaving for Great Britain, leaving the bulk of their equipment for the Indian Army. His only regret is that he will miss working with the likes of General Bill Slim and General “Vinegar Joe” Stilwell, whom he'd heard had died of stomach cancer a couple months ago.

If he does this, Jim says that he already has the backing of the American military, and will be recognized by the American government. The only wrinkle in the silk will be to get Chiang Kai-shek and his son, Ching-kuo, in the same place, at the same time...

Tuesday, December 6, 2011

Previously: Private Javier Gonzales’ career in the 5th Overseas Regiment of volunteers from Latin America was over before it began. He was captured and tortured by Communist partisans, whilst on his way to the NATO/Soviet front line - currently frozen along the Pyrenees. As it quickly becomes apparent to the partisans that Javier has no valuable information, his interrogator decides to simply … kill him *Episode 6

Date: 7 September 1946, morning

Location: The Northern Pyrenees, Spain*

The interrogator flinched when the next volley of gunfire crackled from somewhere outside – somewhere nearer than a moment ago. But he just looked at his hunting knife again, with that odd glint in his pale eyes:

“Well, where do you want to cut this one? ” he asked … the knife. “The throat, like that filthy corporal?”

“Alonso!” Pablo snapped. “Get this hijo de puerco on the truck – now! Otherwise I’ll leave you to Jäger and his vultures.” He hurried out again.

Javier had only a split-second to feel the odd, overwhelming relief that comes with being told that you’ll probably survive for a few minutes more -- then Alonso hit him directly in the face with a knotted fist.

The last thing he heard Alonso grumble was: “So, traitor – they did not forget about you after all.”

Javier almost blacked out - but not quite. He was paralyzed by the blow to his head, yes, but he could still sense what was going on around him. Alonso cut the remaining ropes and threw Javier to the floor, twisting his arm and whirling some of the spare rope around both of Javier’s wrists. Then he picked up Javier and flung him over his shoulder like he was a puppet. It all took less than a minute.

“Vamos! Vamos!” Pablo shouted from the outside. Alonso moved quickly through the door that led out of the darkened room. *The dawn light outside was gray. A thick mist hung between the tall fir trees. But the sudden shift from ink-black torture room to daylight hurt Javier’s eyes nonetheless; the mountain cold stung in the face; there was the smell of tree resin and diesel oil. Javier was shaken more fully to his senses when Alonso dropped him hard on the open bed of a farmer-truck that looked like it was already old when the First World War was on. Then he heard someone call out:

“ - Gonzales! - You’re alive!”

Half a day or so ago, Javier had not thought he would be happy to ever hear Miguel’s gruff voice again. The big Cuban was lying on his side in the back of the truck bed with Dominic – the Haitian – beside him. Both were tied on their hands and legs. Dominic was bleeding from his mouth and pretty much everywhere else on his face and seemed barely conscious. Miguel had several nasty bruises as well, but at least there was no doubt he was alive.

“Ugh!”

Javier had only just regained his full ability to see clearly, when the first thing he looked into was the hideously staring white eyes of corporal Espinoza. There was a deep gaping wound in the corporal’s throat and a pool of sticky half-dried blood all over the planks of the truck bed. Then Alonso jumped onto the bed, and immediately began heaving Espinoza’s corpse out over the open rear.

“You - you get rid of him for us!” Alonso shouted over his back and Javier now saw and old man – much older than Pablo – come out of another door of what appeared to be a small wooden cabin: His former prison. The old man was accompanied by a young boy and a young girl – not much more than teens. The boy and the girl grabbed Corporal Espinoza’s corpse just as a bullet whizzed over Javier’s head and splintered against the metal back of the driver’s cab.

“What about Manuel and Francisco?” yelled Alonso, just as Pablo tore open the door to the cab.

“Their sacrifice will be remembered,” said Pablo and glanced quickly back up into the woods. “We agreed they would signal us if there was trouble and - ”

“ - And now we are sitting ducks. Let’s drive!” somebody inside the driver’s cab called out.

While this exchange between Alonso and Pablo went on, the old man walked unsteadily to the rear of the truck, seemingly oblivious to the shots that were now crackling even louder - from somewhere further up the forested slope on which the small cabin was nestled. Javier tried to see, but the pine trees stood too close. Then the old man obscured his field of vision. He just stood there, looking at Javier and the other prisoners. While Alonso was distracted, Javier made a quick decision.

“You’ve got to … got to help us …” Javier whispered – “bring word to the NATO forces that we are capt-”

Javier had instinctively assumed that the old woodsman and his children (grandchildren?) were being forced to share their cabin with the partisans. It was an assumption that was quickly put to an end when the old man spat Javier directly in the eyes:

“ – Fascist traitor!”

Then Javier heard Alonso curse loudly somewhere behind him:

“What if it’s not los Alemanes, Pablo? Did Manuel or Francisco signal how many there are? If there are only a few … ”

“It’s all of them,” Pablo said with grim finality and slammed the door. *The truck roared down the winding dirt that snaked from behind the wooden cabin and down the mountainside. Alonso had slumped down again on the truck bed and produced an old Mauser rifle from somewhere. It was his only weapon besides the hunting knife, which was now tucked in his belt. He fired a few shots back up towards the heavy pine trees, where the invisible enemy appeared to be firing from, but he didn’t bother to fire more than two or three times.

“Once we get down to the village – we can disappear from them!” Pablo panted from inside the driver’s cab. “Yes,” the other voice from inside agreed, equally short of breath. “It’s market day – ha,ha.”

Then Javier felt it: – One of his hands was almost loose from the ropes.

Javier was lying on one side near the rear of the truck bed, his back pressed against its right side which was little more than one large plank bolted in an angle to the others. His hands, however - tied behind his back - were very much out of sight from Alonso. The truck hurled through the woods and Javier hit his head on the planks and rusty bolts of the truck bed several times, but he gritted his teeth and kept working with the loose rope. Javier had rather small hands. He had always hated that. Now it would make a … vital difference.

Alonso was lying flat down, aiming over the truck bed’s open rear, trying fruitlessly to find something to shoot at. It took him one precious second to become aware that suddenly Javier had a free hand - a hand that now grabbed the partisan’s big hunting knife from his belt. And when that precious second was over and Alonso was fully ready to twist around and shoot Javier … then the knife was planted deep in his thigh.

Alonso howled in pain and almost fell out over the rear of the truck, as it took another swerve.

“Kill the bastard!!” Miguel shouted from the back, desperately worming his way towards them to help. Dominic still didn’t move.

With his free right hand Javier tore the knife out of Alonso’s thigh. Thick, dark blood spurted all over both men. It looked like he had hit a vein. Alonso clung on to the rear of the truck with one hand, trying to get a clear shot with his rifle with the other, but it was a rather difficult feat at such close range, hanging half-way over the back of a racing vintage truck.

“Kill him!!” Miguel cried again - but then he was thrown back against the driver’s cab as the truck braked hard - not to stop, but to take off speed so it didn’t go down the ravine on the left side of the road.

“You … haven’t got the … guts,” Alonso sneered while he struggled to heave himself all the way up on the truck bed again. Wounded and still hanging half-way over the rear, the big hulk of a man actually managed to hold on to the rifle and fire it with one hand, but the shot went nowhere. It was close enough to Javier’s head, though, to leave his ears ringing.

Javier did not think about the blood anymore. His left hand was still enmeshed in ropes but he could move it now that his right one was free, so he grabbed the nearest edge, which was the planks that made out the open rear of the truck, pulled himself forward in one swift movement and plunged the hunting knife deep into Alonso’s gut.*

Pablo almost had to wrench his neck to look out the window in the passenger’s side. He could not see what was going on up on the truck bed – but he could hear that something had gone terribly wrong. He grabbed his revolver. The driver, Antonio, suddenly braked again. Pablo hit his head against the window-sill.

“What the fuck are you doing?! The road is almost even from here – drive, drive!!”

“But comrade – look!” Antonio gasped, pointing frantically ahead.

Pablo’s eyes narrowed. Then he felt for the first time how cold the sweat on his brow actually was.

The vintage truck had just raced around the last bend in the dirt road. From now on it should have been a more or less straight run to the village. But no more than 100 meters ahead there was another truck parked – no, it was … an armored personel carrier – an American M3, it seemed. It was placed firmly across the dirt road, making it impossible to pass ... unless they wanted to crash into the cliffs on one side or into the pine-filled ravine on the other.

But it was not an American white star that was on the side of the M3. And it was not an American G.I. who Pablo saw behind the Browning machine gun on its roof. It was a single man who wore an open camouflage jacket of indeterminable origin. The man wore a gray high-peaked cap with a black stripe.

The man aimed the machine gun slowly, leisurely. He wasn’t in any hurry.

“What are you waiting for!!” Antonio howled - “Shoot him! Shoot him!”

“It’s no good,” Pablo mumbled. “We’re already dead.”

Even so Pablo tried to aim with his revolver, out the window, while the old truck still rushed down the gravel road towards the lone man. His last thought was of Guernica, when Pablo’s dying brother had told him take his revolver and ‘fight on’ for them. So many had died in the fascist bombing. It was at that time that Pablo knew he could no more look on from the sidelines.

Here and now Pablo felt he could see the skull on the man’s cap very clearly, just before a spray of machine gun bullets hammered through the truck’s front window. ...Next episode:

Javier and his fellow soldiers finally get to the NATO/Soviet front, but no longer as part of their lost regiment. Welcome to the elite NATO Anti-Partisan Unit, formerly known as the … Waffen SS.

You can read Chris’ own short stories at www.shadeofthemorningsun.com"

Monday, December 5, 2011

“What do you mean? What is it?”“A couple of position papers by that brownnoser Halderman. He sure made his way up the food chain fast.”“Let me look…This is why rose in rank so fast. This first one became General Order 1435 and the other 1573.”“So he’s responsible for those? I often wondered where those ideas from left field come from.”“Alright so lets put them in the files with the General Orders they generated.”“Sounds good to me.”

15 June 1946

Policy Proposal

--Classified: Top Secret--

Subject: returning Japanese troops

The Office of the Chief of Staff to the Commander in ChiefU.S. Department of War

The (OCSCC) have consulted with the United States Department of State regarding the large number of repatriated Japanese troops returning from Asia and the Pacific. The general consensus is that these Japanese troops will have to be utilized in Home Defense Battalions, sparing the manpower of the occupation forces from the additional burden of having to defend a one-time mortal enemy. It is estimated that between 1 to 2 million men of eligible military age will return to the Japanese Home Islands at the end of the repatriation process.

It is proposed that returning Japanese soldiers be screened and vetted by the U.S. Army's Counter-Intelligence Corps. Soldiers that CIC deems trustworthy will be immediately formed into Home Defense units, trained and armed by the Allied occupation forces, with surplus U.S. weapons, equipment, kit and uniforms. Toward the goal of training these forces, Military Assistance Group-Japan (MAG-J) will be stood up and immediately transferred to U.S. Armed Forces Far East Command, Tokyo. As a security measure, an Allied battalion will be attached to every 4 Japanese Home Defense battalion, acting as an HQ battalion.

Conversely, returning Japanese soldiers that do not pass the CIC screening process will be sent to “De-Nazification” camps, where upon completion, will be released to the custody of the Reconstruction Battalions, to serve out the remainder of their original term of military conscription (most Japanese conscripts captured or surrendered were fairly recently called up for service, most having 2-3 years, of 5 years, remaining to serve).

As always, input and ideas are always welcome, as they will only make this plan stronger.

B/Gen. David H. Halderman Chief Of Staff, U.S. Army War Plans Division

--------------------------------------------

21 August 1946

Office of the Chief of Staff to the Commander in ChiefU.S. Department of War Policy Proposal

--Classified: Top Secret--

Subject: Resolution of Problematic Issues in the Far East

There is cause for concern as there are increasingly frequent artillery skirmishes occurring along the 38th parallel on the Korean Peninsula, attacks launched by the Soviet forces that occupied the area north of that latitude. The artillery is sporadic and likely not directed at any specific targets. However, it is the informed opinion of the local military commander that these are probing barrages and that we need to accelerate the combat training of our Korean allies, before the Soviets decide that the time to apply their knowledge of where we are NOT is now.

OCSCC proposes that Korean battalions are rotated to Japan for ease of training and re-equipment. Korean units are to be trained alongside newly arrived U.S. and KMT Chinese troops. All units will be cross-trained with new U.S. equipment.

As for the issue of French Indo-China, we urge our colleagues at the State Department to place pressure on the French Government in exile to relinquish their colony there, or we will be forced to support the unilateral declaration of independence of the local people there. There are four major ethnicities that constitute this area: Vietnamese, Khmer, Lao and Hmong. Three of these ethnicities have political capability to declare independence: the Vietnamese, the Khmer and the Lao. We already have the support of the Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh, who has long been an advocate of an American form of government for an independent Vietnam, and the local Khmer leader, Prince Sihanouk, who wants a constitutional monarchy in the area he represents, Cambodia.

And finally, the issue of China. Since the end of the war, Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek has become increasingly friendly with the Japanese POW's still on Chinese soil, simply to pique Chairman Mao Tse-tung and the Chinese Communist Party, and to use the Japanese troops to occupy territory that he wishes to deny to the Communists. He apparently has no clue that his actions have consequences. The Chinese people are becoming far more disenchanted with him and his policies than ever before. If we can not convince him that his current course is, at best, unwise, we shall then be forced to back another factional leader of the KMT.

As always, advice and input is gladly received.

B/Gen. David H. Halderman Chief Of Staff, U.S. Army War Plans Division